Skip to main content
Salad

Cold Slaw

Cold Slaw is a chilled cabbage salad with a creamy dressing of eggs, milk, cream, vinegar, mustard, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cold Slaw

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbage very fine and place it in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light.

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the milk and cream, then gradually add to the hot vinegar.

  2. Dissolve the mustard, pepper, and salt in the vinegar before heating.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir all slowly to avoid curdling, then pour the creamy mixture over the cabbage.

  2. Serve very cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the creamy dressing.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with heat, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the dairy and eggs.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the creamy dressing.

The step that matters

Stir slowly while combining the creamy mixture with the hot vinegar. Egg proteins and milk proteins set when heated, especially in acid. Adding the dairy gradually and stirring slowly keeps the heat even, so the dressing stays smooth instead of curdling.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More cold slaw recipes

Dressing 49 See all 157 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes